


Eugilatio

by feralphoenix



Series: Puer Maledraconis Gulcasa☆Magica [4]
Category: Blaze Union, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Gen, Illustrated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after the "miracle" that saved him, he meets a certain boy--and begins to realize that every miracle has its price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

My footsteps ring on the tile as I run through the building. My breath is coming in ugly wheezes, and my throat hurts. Every now and then the floor shakes, and it makes me nearly lose my balance. But I have to keep running. Even though I’m scared, even though it’s dangerous, there’s something I have to see.

There’s no one here. There’s no one to ask for directions. But my destination is clear. The elevators aren’t working—their power’s been cut because of what’s happening—but the stairways are clear. In the dim emergency lights, I can see the doorway that leads to the outside, and before I can think twice about what I’m doing, I make myself go through.

The strength of the wind almost makes me fall. I’m so high up that if I think about it I might faint. The ground shakes again and reminds me of why I came all this way. Arms still up to shield my face if I have to, I take one step and then another.

There’s a monster on the horizon.

The smoke and the dark mean that I can’t see its true shape too well—just the shape of giant gears on top of it. It’s coming closer and closer. I know what’ll happen if it comes all this way. But even above and beyond that knowledge—I just have this gut reaction to seeing the thing that makes me feel like my insides have all gone to jelly. I want to fall to my knees, make myself small, cower and hide. And even then, I don’t know if it’ll be enough for that thing to pass me by. It doesn’t even have to notice me to kill me—kind of like a hurricane or an earthquake doesn’t have to notice a little animal for it to get caught up in the disaster and die.

The lights of the buildings are flickering in the distance. Down, down, so far below me that it feels like it’s in a different country, the streetlights flicker to the same rhythm. The jagged outlines of the city are warped and tangled, half-crushed buildings leaning into each other. The roads and the wind-power turbines surrounding the parks are torn up. This thing really is like a natural disaster. It’ll engulf this whole town and rip it to bits.

Standing on the rooftop of another building, far enough away that I can only see if I stand at the safety railings and strain my eyes, there’s a boy.

He’s wearing strange clothes—something purple that could be a dress or a robe, with gold ribbons blowing around his body—and his short dirty-blond hair is windblown. He’s standing on top of the rails with something in his hands. Even as I start to shake seeing someone there, he leaps from his perch with so much strength that the metal bends backward.

And he flies through the air like a—like a superhero, like an angel from a fairy tale. But from the direction of the distant monster, pillars of fire come scything through the air at him.

He moves his arms, and little beams of light cut the fire away before it can reach him. With what’s left of my cracked voice, I try to scream to warn him—but he must be too far away to hear. The top of a broken building slams into him, crashing into another skyscraper and sending it tilting sideways.

My vision fades. I almost slump to the ground. I want to throw up, even though there’s nothing left for my stomach to get rid of, after all the times I vomited from anxiety on the way here.

But. There’s an explosion, along the side of the building wall. When the dust clears—he’s there. I can see blood running down his bare arms and legs, and he looks like he can barely even stand, but he’s alive.

And—he jumps again, crashing into the side of another building, using window ledges to leap his way up and up, trying to get to where the monster is.

“No.”

My hands shake no matter how hard I cling to the rail. My whole body’s shaking, just looking at this.

“This is—it’s terrible. It’s too much. Why? Even though he knows—”

He can’t possibly win. Even I can tell that much, just watching from a distance. I don’t know how strong he is, but I can tell the difference in power. If he keeps trying to fight that thing, he’ll _die._

“Well, it just can’t be helped!”

I startle. When I turn, she’s sitting on the rails next to me like she hasn’t got a care in the world: Pink and gaudy like a cartoon character, with a big cheerful grin to match.

“It’s too heavy a burden for him. He’s just too weaky weaky weak to handle this fight all by himself!”

“You’ve gotta—you’ve got to help him, then! He’ll die, and the town—”

The witch girl shrugs. “There’s nothing _I_ can do about it. And besides, _he_ knew just what he was in for when he decided to get in her way!”

 Something about her total lack of concern makes me even sicker than the sight of the boy’s blood. She hums tunelessly, kicking her feet against the guard rails as if to make her own percussion.

But then she stops and leans forward. She stares at me with big green eyes and a grin, propping her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.

“But you’re different. With your power, you could change all this. You could save him and the town and everybody. You could change everybody’s fate. You’ve got that kind of power inside you—” She wiggles her pointer finger in circles, and jabs it lightly at me. “Your potential is just that amazing!”

I swallow. The town lights up red, then white.

“Really?” I’m shaking all over. The wind is roaring so hard it makes my ears hurt. In the distance, that boy is screaming or shouting something, but he’s too far away for me to hear. “I can really stop this? Someone like _me_ could really save him?”

“Yeah!” The witch girl grins and sits up straight. The cheerfulness that made her creepy a moment ago makes her look as cute and innocent as a little kid now, as her whole face glows with delight.

_“How?”_

“It’s easy!” She hops down from the rail and pivots when she lands, grinning up at me. “Just make a contract with me, and become a Puer Magi—a magical boy!”

 

 

 

 

I can hear birds cheeping. My legs are too hot, my arms and chest are cold, and there’s sleep grit in my eyes. For a minute or so, I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing. When I open my eyes, the ceiling looks strange. But once I sit up—then I recognize my bed, and my desk and shelves. I’m in my room.

“It was just a dream?”

I pick up a pillow and slump forward, still sleepy. Even with an awful nightmare like that, for it all to end in such a cliché is kinda funny.


	2. Chapter 2

“Jenon got turned down by a girl again.”

My mother, who’s at the other sink doing her makeup, sighs. “Goodness, but that boy bounces back from disappointments quickly. How many girls has he asked out this month?”

I splash water on my face and smile at my reflection. He’s already looking less pale and scared. Routines are good for that, and so’s being around my mom and sister. Emilia has a full-length mirror in her room, so she primps straight after she wakes up. That leaves the bathroom for my mother and me. It’s nice, getting to have her to myself for a little bit in the morning. It’s just the three of us that live here, and she’s usually really busy with her work as an attorney. So unless Emilia conks out early, this is usually the only time of day I can talk to my mom on my own.

“Mmm. This is the third, I think. Somehow he always manages to chase after the girls that aren’t interested in him. He’d have a lot more luck if he could only tell which ones _do_ like him. And he’s not even asking the girl _he_ really likes.”

I think we’re past the stage where my mom has to know about every nightmare I have. And besides, I can’t remember as much of it anymore already. So like most days, I just wind up telling her gossip from school.

“My guess would be that Jenon wants to practice,” my mom says. She blots her face with creamy stuff on a big soft puff of fabric. Her makeup is a mystery to me. “Because he still feels shy about telling that special girl how he feels, he’d rather play around with other girls in the hope that he’ll be less nervous when he tries out the real deal. But I definitely agree with you that he ought to try to consider those girls’ feelings, too. Asking out a new girl each week just proves that he doesn’t really see any girl as special.”

Mom steps away from the mirror and does a twirl, gesturing to her face with a flourish. I applaud. It’s hard for me to tell exactly how the makeup changes how she looks, even though I know it does. Personally, I think she looks nice either way. She’s my savior, after all. But when I told her that, she just laughed and told me that I can only afford to think that way because I’m her son.

“Yeah. If he could just tell that Siskier doesn’t think much of his playboy act, he might have a chance, but…”

I sit down and pass my mother the hair brush. She stands behind me and runs the bristles through my hair while I look at my reflection. It feels really nice when she does this, like she’s proving to me that I’m safe. Still, nobody but my family and my closest friends will ever have permission to touch my hair like this. _Nobody._

“Youth is a funny time,” my mother says to me. The far wall of the bathroom is mirrored too, so around the edges of our reflections, I can see mirror copies of us going on and on to infinity. “You’re all still figuring out how to fall in like or love. It’s an important time to practice, because humans have to fail over and over again before we can get things correct.”

I try to smile. “I guess—I’m just a late bloomer or something then. It feels weird sometimes. All my friends are running around getting crushes on people. Jenon likes Siskier, and Yggdra likes Jenon and all, but I’ve never liked anybody that way. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m broken ‘cause of what the old man did to me, or what. If falling in love as a teenager is normal, then I wonder if I’m just not normal.”

“Now, that isn’t true at all.” My mother sets the brush down and puts her hands on my shoulders. I keep looking at the mirror. We’re blood family, but we look nothing alike. She’s average height and has white hair and blue eyes and a lined face. I have all this red hair and my eyes are yellow. Emilia and I take after our old man, may he rot in jail. “Not everyone experiments at your age. Why, there are many people who never fall in love at all, and they still live full and happy lives. It can help you to understand the actions and behavior of others by considering what the ‘average’ person does, but you mustn’t hurt yourself by holding yourself to someone else’s standards. Maybe you’ll fall in love someday, and maybe you won’t. Either is fine, as long as you are happy. What’s most important is to take good care of yourself, and to be kind to yourself and the people around you.

“And most importantly of all—just because you’ve been hurt in the past doesn’t mean that you’re broken for ever.”

She picks the brush back up and runs it through my hair for a few more strokes, and then lifts my ribbon off the counter.

When my mom first made the ribbon for me, I didn’t really understand how it would help. But it really does. It’s a reminder that I have people who want me to feel safe and happy, a reminder I’ve needed. I’ve been wearing it every day since then, and I don’t know if I’d feel right going to school without it.

She ties my hair up with a flourish.

“All ready to take on the day,” she announces.

“Just like my mom,” I say. The mirror reflects both of us smiling.

 

 

Emilia and my mother both have to leave later than me, so I say goodbye to them once I’m done with breakfast and head outside.

“You sure took your time. My sisters left already.”

My next-door neighbor Yggdra is leaning on the partitioning wall. She’s jiggling her foot with impatience as she frowns at me.

“You could’ve gone with them.”

“They asked me to wait for you and let you know that they can’t come to the club meeting today. Their fencing meet got moved up, and they have to meet up with Dad as soon as school lets out so that they’ll have time to get there.” Yggdra sighs at the unfairness of older sisters and pushes herself up. “Hurry, or we’ll be late meeting Siskier and Jenon!”

Apparently my mom has been friends with Yggdra’s dad for a while. Since we’re neighbors, she asked for his advice a lot back when Emilia and I first came to live here. Even now, Emilia and I tend to go to the Artwaltzes’ house when our mother’s at work and we need an adult.

Yggdra’s the youngest of the three Artwaltz kids, and she’s a first-year student at the same high school as me. She and her sisters Luciana and Aegina are friends of mine. The three of them are in the same club as me, and usually they walk to school together with me, Siskier, and Jenon.

Those two are waiting for us at the usual crosswalk. We head to school together along the usual path. It’s a nice day—the sky’s blue with only a few clouds, and there’s a breeze.

“You seem pretty happy for a guy who’s already been turned down three times in one month,” Siskier says to Jenon. She’s grinning. She loves to give him grief. It’s not just Jenon—Siskier likes to poke fun at people, as long as she’s not hurting their feelings.

“A man has to live in hope,” Jenon says. He’s grinning back. It looks to me like he’s just enjoying the attention. He’s gotten really tall over the past couple years, and when he’s talking to the girls he has to look down a little now.

“Mom says that if you keep this up, by the time you get around to asking a girl out for real she’s never gonna take you seriously,” I tell him.

Jenon seems unfazed. “I won’t know unless I try—no disrespect to your lovely mother.”

 _“Jenon,”_ Siskier says in disgust.

Jenon likes women. All women. Three years ago, when he first met my mom and sister, he hit on them both within the same five minutes. Emilia was nine back then and my mother’s in her forties, to give an idea of his range. He doesn’t flirt with people who are in relationships, but he keeps trying to put on airs as some kind of gentleman ladykiller. I think he thinks it’s charming and suave. I also think it’d be a lot more effective if he’d ever been in a relationship, but try telling Jenon that and see where it gets you.

The other thing is that Jenon’s had a crush on Siskier since I can’t even remember when. This doesn’t stop him from losing his brain whenever he runs into some other lady, but Siskier’s the only girl he doesn’t get googly-eyed over. I don’t think Siskier knows. At the rate Jenon’s going, it’s gonna be ages until he actually confesses.

“Either that or you’re just not asking the right girls out,” Yggdra says meaningfully.

Jenon doesn’t seem to get the hint. “Yeah, that’s what I’d like to think too.”

Siskier turns to me and rolls her eyes. It’s just as obvious to both of us that Yggdra likes him as it’s obvious to me that Jenon likes Siskier.

Thinking about it that way makes it seem like a disaster about to happen, but we’re all friends. Siskier and Jenon have overcome a lot of melodrama in order to take care of each other and me, and even though Yggdra tends to rise to the bait when her sisters pick on her she’s a good person. Even if Jenon winds up dating one of them, I believe that things will work out to keep all our friendships intact.

Siskier frowns. “Gulcasa, your tie is crooked.”

I hold still to let her fix it. Yggdra groans and rolls her eyes, impatient to get to class. Jenon smiles patiently. I watch them over the top of Siskier’s head. Light falls through the leaves of the trees lining the road, making bright patches on Yggdra’s bright hair and Jenon’s face.

“That’s better,” Siskier says, and smiles up at me. I don’t know when she got so short.

“Thank you,” I tell her, and she beams.

If it were Jenon’s tie or Yggdra’s ribbon that were crooked I bet she’d have taken the opportunity to pick on them. But she’s always been sort of—gentler, more motherly around me. I’m grateful for it. She’s been like a big sister or a second mom to me for a long time, so she must be able to tell that the kind of goofing around she does with the others would probably make me feel bad.

“You _need_ to start learning to tie your own ties right,” Yggdra says.

“Shut up. Ties are harder than bows. At least I _can_ tie them myself now.”

“And it’s not like Gulcasa has had as much practice as us,” Siskier adds. “The boys’ uniform was a gakuran in middle school, so he didn’t have a tie back then.”

“And they were boring uniforms too.” Jenon stretches his arms out, gazing up through the trees. “The girls’ uniforms were supposed to have been made by a famous designer and were pretty cute, but the boys’ weren’t stylish at all.”

“And there’s our fashion report from Jenon, who it seems only went to Mitakihara Middle School to ogle the girls,” Siskier says.

“I think your uniforms now are pretty cute though, too,” Jenon retorts. He looks from Siskier to Yggdra and grins. Yggdra goes red in the face.

“Well, _I_ like this uniform better, even if you all still think I can’t tie a tie,” I say.

“Why’s that?” Siskier wants to know.

“The boys’ top’s a sweater. If it were a blazer like yours and Yggdra’s, I’d have to button _two_ sets of buttons every morning.”

 _“Lazy,”_ says Yggdra. She’s starting to giggle.

“Well, it helps to have little fingers when you’re buttoning a billion buttons.”

Jenon is nodding sagely at me from further down the path. “Of course, I do miss seeing the middle school uniforms too. Gulcasa, you should let me come play at your house more. That way I can see your sister wear it.”

I can feel my expression starting to twist in disgust, so I force my face into the best smile I can make. “You fucking lolicon.”

“I’m just looking,” Jenon says, and starts to laugh.

_“She’s twelve.”_

“Lolicon,” says Siskier.

“Lolicon,” says Yggdra.

“Oh, knock it off, you guys!” says Jenon.

“C’mon, let’s run the rest of the way. If we stay with this guy too long, we’ll catch his lolicon germs,” says Siskier, and she starts to jog. The rest of us run after her.

 

 

We split up with Yggdra once we’ve all changed into our uwabaki. She heads for her own first-year classroom, and we go to the third-year floor.

I don’t know if it’s plain good luck or if my mom got the school to do it because of my circumstances, but I’ve been in the same class with Siskier and Jenon for three years now. Our homeroom advisor this year is a science teacher who loves her subject a lot. Judging from her glowing expression and the way her hair is frizzy and burnt in places, I guess we’re going to get an earful about her latest experiment. I’m right.

We get lectures about rocket launches and chemistry all the time in homeroom. Our curriculum’s pretty advanced, but honestly our teacher’s way above our level. I hardly ever understand the things she talks about, so I just tune it out. Lots of the other students do the same. Siskier’s desk is near mine, and I can see her doodling in a corner of one of her textbooks. Jenon’s watching politely with his hands folded. If I didn’t know what kinds of grades he gets in chemistry, I’d think he was actually following along. Our teacher’s still in her late twenties and she’s nice-looking, though, so I bet that’s what he’s paying attention to.

“Oh yeah, and also—” The teacher scratches at her head. Then she smiles and straightens her glasses. “Here’s an important announcement. Today a new student has transferred to our class.”

“Shouldn’t that’ve come first?” Siskier says under her breath. I look down at my desk to hide my smile.

“He’s been hospitalized with a heart condition for a long time, so this is his first time coming to school in a while. He’ll probably be confused or nervous about a lot of things, so you all be good to him or I’ll know why.” The teacher turns to the door and beckons. “Come on in and introduce yourself, don’t be shy.”

A boy walks into the classroom, and before I know what’s happening I’m holding my breath.

The first thing that comes to notice is that he’s not wearing our uniform. The off-white sweater and layered skirt must be his own clothes, since I’ve never seen a uniform that looks like that. He’s wearing jewelry—a ring on his left hand and a heavy pendant. His hair is short, light, and messy. His skin’s very pale. He’s short for a 17 or 18-year-old boy, about the same height as the teacher. He’s got a small frame under the clothes and a soft, expressionless face like a doll.

Looking at a strange kid like this, most people’s first instinct would probably be to exclaim that he’s cute or to make fun of his clothes or build. But it feels like the temperature of this room’s just dropped ten degrees. His—his aura, his demeanor, whatever it is—it’s forbidding, and freezing cold.

The new student lifts the pen and writes his name on the smartboard. He replaces the pen and puts his palms flat on his thighs. He bows to us lightly and raises his head to stare at us.

He’s staring right at _me._

“My name is Nessiah. It is nice to meet you. Please look after me.”

It’s the shortest, blandest kind of self-introduction. But where from someone else it would be boring, from this boy it seems creepy. He’s still staring at me. He’s barely even blinking.

And he looks exactly like the boy in my dream last night.

I try to make myself small in my seat and look down at my hands. When I peek up through my hair, he’s still looking at me.

 

 

Whatever the teacher said about Nessiah’s being away from school for a long time, he’s obviously kept up with his studies. Class after class, whenever he gets called on, he walks up to the board without hesitation. In math class, when our teacher offers a set of sample problems from the pre-calculus unit we’ll be doing later, Nessiah is able to solve all of them perfectly. My classmates’ curious whispers turn into gasps of surprise, and then murmurs of admiration.

It’s not even Nessiah’s sheer skill so much as his _attitude._ He seems bored. He doesn’t volunteer to answer questions, he just does it when he’s called on like anybody else. The class would turn on him in a second if he seemed stuck-up, but he’s not even a little bit.

Gym is the only class he doesn’t put us all to shame at. He doesn’t even change into a P.E. uniform, he just sits on the side in his usual clothes. I can feel his eyes on me the entire time. By the end of the class I just want to hide behind Jenon and not come out for the rest of the day.

During break time, everybody crowds around Nessiah and bombards him with questions before I even have time to get my lunch out.

“Hey, where did you go to school before you were in the hospital?”

“I was at a private school in another town.” Nessiah’s voice is so quiet, I can only hear him because they all hush to listen to his answer.

“Where do you shop?”

“I haven’t been well enough to visit stores, so I buy my clothes online.”

“How come you aren’t wearing our uniform? Did you just not buy it yet?”

“I get rashes when I wear rough fabrics. The doctors say it’s because of my lack of exposure to most things in the hospital. I don’t intend to purchase this school’s uniform unless that improves.”

“Did you do any club activities at your old school?”

They must all be excited because we hardly ever get transfer students, especially at this time of year. I don’t know if I could go near him on my own, even if I were wound up like them.

Jenon and Siskier aren’t a part of the crowd. Instead they’ve come to my desk with their lunches out. We usually all eat on the roof together, after all.

“That new kid sure has been staring at you all day,” Jenon remarks. “I wonder what his problem is.”

All of a sudden there’s movement in the big cluster of students at Nessiah’s desk. Nessiah himself has stood up.

“Please excuse me. I need to go to the nurse’s office during lunch hour to get medicine.”

As soon as he stops talking, there’s a big clamor of offers. Nessiah raises a hand to quiet the other students and shakes his head.

“No, please don’t worry about me. I will have the health representative show me the way.”

And he glides in between all the desks, coming to a stop right in front of me. His eyes are the darkest green I’ve ever seen. He looks down at me with an expressionless face.

“…Gulcasa. You are the health representative in this class, correct? Could I have you escort me to the nurse’s office, please?”

 

 

I’m stuck.

I volunteered to be the health rep because I like to take care of people, and class rep is too stressful a job for me. But I never imagined that my position would put me in a mess like this.

Nessiah walks down the hall ahead of me, like he’s leading me and not the other way around. His steps are purposeful. The line of his shoulders is tense. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. But he seems annoyed, or angry, or—driven, somehow. I can feel myself cowering instinctively.

“Um—uh, who told you that I’m the health rep?”

He doesn’t even look at me when he answers. “I heard it from Ms. Eudy.”

“Oh.” His voice is soft and doesn’t betray whatever he’s feeling. If only I could read him better, I wouldn’t be so nervous right now. “Uh—anyway, the nurse’s office is—”

“This way, yes?” And he turns right down the corridor. I chase after his back.

“Yeah—um.” Topic. I have to think of a topic of conversation. “Actually, it kind of—seems like maybe you already know the way, and…”

I can see the shape of his shoulder blades move underneath his sweater. His steps don’t falter, but I get the feeling his tension, or whatever, is increasing.

“Is—is everything okay? Because you seem kind of mad, or upset, or… I’m sorry if it’s something I—”

He turns around, and I fall silent. His motion is graceful and perfect, like a ballet dancer or something. He just swings around on his heel. His skirt spins around like it’s a flower opening, all the individual layers of fabric swaying. The heavy jewel on the chain around his neck swings back and forth against his chest like a pendulum on a clock. He is staring right at me again, and his gaze is so cold I can’t even speak.

“Gulcasa. Do you believe that your daily life is blessed? Are your family and your friends important to you?”

I’m dumbfounded. He keeps staring at me. I clench my fists.

“I—I do think they’re important. I love my friends. I love my family. And—and I know just how good my life right now is.”

He considers me for a minute. His eyes are narrowed, but I can’t read his expression. “Is this true?”

I’m a little stung by that. “Of course it’s true! I-I wouldn’t lie about something like that!”

Nessiah’s eyelids shutter mostly closed. His eyes are a line of darkness under white lashes. “…I see. If that is truly the case—then you must not ever try to become someone different than the person you are now. You must not change. You must simply stay the same Gulcasa you are now tomorrow, and forever. If you don’t—you will lose everything you love.”

Nessiah turns a perfect hundred and eighty degrees again. He keeps walking down the hallway in self-assured, unhurried steps. I can’t move. I can barely even wonder what that was all about. Those icy words have filled me with such an awful sense of foreboding, I feel like I can’t breathe.

 

 

“Ehh?”

I sigh. “I know. It makes no sense, right?”

It’s mid-afternoon now. Classes have let out. Siskier, Jenon, Yggdra, and I are all in the home economics classroom, which is where the cooking club meets. Since Yggdra’s sisters are gone today, it’s just the four of us. And I’m too nervous to trust myself cooking or overseeing anybody else’s work, so we’ve just gotten out some cookies from last week and are eating those.

“I was wondering what kind of person your new classmate is, but I guess he’s just a space case,” says Yggdra. She eats a lemon snap. “Is this that chuuni-whatsit fad? Does he think he’s moe?”

Siskier rests her face in her hands. “But, Gulcasa, do you really not know him? He’s been staring at you so much all day.”

I make a face and consider my options. “Well—I mean, logically… no, we haven’t met, but…”

“But?” asks Jenon. “Does that mean there’s some non-logical way that you _do_ know him?”

“Mmm.” I look up at the ceiling and scratch my head. “I sort of—met him in a dream last night, I guess?”

All three of my friends stare at me, and then Jenon and Yggdra start laughing.

“You met in a dream!” Yggdra covers her mouth with a hand. “That’s really great. Gulcasa, now you’re talking like you’re an anime character too! That’s fairly precious. It’s fate! Clearly, that you’ve met must be fate! He’s your soulmate from beyond space and time! You must have known each other in a past life, and you dreamed him up because your heart still remembers!”

“Will you stop it? This is creepy, and I’m worried about it!”

Siskier is hiding her mouth too. She’s probably smoothing out a smile where I can’t see it. At least she’s not actually laughing, like the other two. “What kind of dream was it, do you remember?”

“Not really. Just that it was really weird, and it was a nightmare…”

Jenon wipes his eyes. “Yggdra’s facetiousness aside, maybe you and Nessiah have actually met somewhere before. He left an impression and so your subconscious remembered him, and then your brain reused his face for your dream. I know I’ve read that everyone we ever dream about is actually someone whose face we’ve seen in our day-to-day lives or on television.”

I sigh with all my might. That sounds scientific and reasonable, but what kind of coincidence is it to dream about somebody you saw once and then meet them face to face the next day?

Siskier digs her phone out of her bag and looks at it. “It’s getting pretty late. Jenon, don’t you have something or other lessons to go to today?”

Jenon rolls his eyes. “Ugh, don’t remind me. I’ve attended enough business lectures that I feel like if I have to look at one more graph I’m going to spontaneously combust. And then there’s cram school after that.”

I salute him. “Good luck, man. Watching you every day makes me glad I’m not rich.”

Jenon shakes his head and stands up, pushing his chair in neatly. He shoulders his bag and sighs. “I just hope my parents let up once exam season hits. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

We wave to him as he leaves. Even though Siskier and Yggdra are still here, I already feel lonelier.

“Do you guys want to go… I don’t know, window shop or something?”

Siskier is staring at her phone again. “I’d love to, but I’ve got some things I have to take care of this evening, too. But I’ll see you two tomorrow, all right?”

Yggdra and I both nod. Once Siskier is out the door, Yggdra turns toward me.

“Then, Gulcasa. I’m going to the mall to look for magazines, so do you want to tag along?”

When all is said and done, I think I’m friends with Yggdra because she does things like this.

 

 

Once we arrive at the mall’s bookstore, Yggdra veers off to check out the magazine rack first thing. If I stand on tiptoe, I can see her hovering at the fashion section. She’s never been one to worry about fads, so I guess it’s true that people get self-conscious about their looks when they want to impress people.

There’s nothing special I want to buy. So I take my time heading over to the cookbooks. Maybe there’ll be something I haven’t read there. If not, I can always go back and bother Yggdra until she’s done.

And while I’m thinking that, I hear a voice call my name and just about jump out of my skin.

_“Gulcasa, help me!”_

“What?”

_“Help meeeee!”_

It sounds like a girl or a little kid. I look around the store, but aside from Yggdra and me, there’s only grownups here. And none of them look like they need help.

Actually, none of them have reacted to the voice at all.

“Where are you?” I ask. Maybe it’s instinct or nervousness, but my voice comes out too small for the other customers to hear.

_“Help meeeeeee!!”_

I don’t recognize the voice, but whoever it is seems to know me. And if they really need help—well, I don’t know how much use somebody like me’s gonna be, but I want to do what I can.

I walk around the store in slow steps. None of the other customers pay me any nevermind, but Yggdra looks up from her magazine and gives me a puzzled face. I can’t find whoever is calling.

But the voice gets louder at the doors.

_“Gulcasa, help!!”_

I put my hands up to my ears to try to catch the sound better. It doesn’t seem like it’s working. When I leave the store, the voice gets louder again though. I try turning left. From the volume and urgency of the voice, it seems like I picked the right way.

“Who are you?”

The voice doesn’t answer. They just keep saying, help, help.

I have to go slow to make sure I’m on the right track. The voice leads me past a couple of stores and then into a long hall with the overhead lights turned off. I think the store that was here went out of business or something. The dark makes me kind of nervous, but what else am I supposed to do? I try to muffle my footsteps as much as I can. Maybe this way, whatever the person wants me to save them from won’t notice me before I find it.

_“Save meeeeee!”_

This time there’s no doubt. It’s coming from the empty store. The entrance is roped off with a sign in the middle that says ‘Closed For Renovations’. I bow my head in apology to the sign and step over the rope. Luckily, the doors aren’t locked.

It’s even darker inside. The carpet’s been torn up and the only light comes from the windows, which are mostly blocked off by big barrels and boxes left by the renovators. I can hear distant sounds of banging, like somebody’s running through the walls or the—

I don’t even have time to finish the thought. A panel of the ceiling drops down and slams into the floor with an awful rattle. I nearly slip and fall on my ass, I jump back so fast. Next comes a big cloud of dust, and then a girl drops down from the hole. She lands on her feet and sinks down into a crouch.

She’s the weirdest-looking girl I’ve ever seen. She’s wearing gaudy pink and purple clothes and has even gaudier curly pink hair. Her eyes are big and round, and she’s holding a witch hat onto her head with both hands. Our eyes meet when she straightens up. A chill makes my back itch. She looks kind of familiar. But I don’t have time to wonder where I’ve seen her before, because she’s covered in scrapes and cuts.

“Save meeeeeeee!!” yells the girl. She holds her arms out to me as if begging for protection and jumps up like she wants to run to me, but her right leg buckles and she falls sideways to the floor with a crash.

I can ask her how she knows my name and was able to call to me from all the way out here later. I can think about where I’ve seen her before then, too. What’s important right now is that she’s hurt and scared and I think she might’ve hit her head. I want to run to her right away, but I’m not sure if it’s safe. When I walk to her side and kneel down, it’s slowly and cautiously, listening hard for any other sudden, unwelcome appearances. Nothing else jumps out, thank god.

Mom’s said to me that it’s not good to move people or animals if you don’t know how badly hurt they are, so I touch the girl very lightly to examine her. Her cuts and scrapes aren’t very bloody, and there’s no blood underneath her head where she hit it, just dusty floor. Her eyes are closed and she seems unconscious—she doesn’t react to me touching her, anyway. Her breathing is loud and raspy.

The feel of her skin is weird. The texture of her clothes is weirder, cold and light and smooth like no fabric I’ve ever touched before. Whoever she is, wherever she came from, I’m dead sure that she’s not a normal person.

There’s another sudden sound, and it makes me want to jump out of my bones. It’s lighter than the noise the girl made, falling out of the air vent or whatever it was. When I turn, there’s someone standing right where she landed. I’m looking at feet in a pair of sandals with wings on the outside of the ankles. I raise my head, taking in a bright purple robe that ends at the knees and gold ribbons that float in the air around the body like they’re made from wire.

It’s Nessiah.

I can’t gauge his expression accurately because it’s dark, but I can feel him staring at me. He touches the gold collar around his neck and the big green stone right in the middle of it, then lets his hand fall to his side.

“Get away from that thing,” he says to me. His voice is just as flat and toneless as when he gave me that weird warning earlier.

The girl came out of the vents, and Nessiah came out after her. Which means Nessiah was chasing her. Which means he’s the reason she’s all scraped up like this. I swallow hard. I’m not brave enough to jump up and fling my body in front of the girl. Leaning down to cover her with my arms is the best I can do.

“Please don’t,” I say. I hate how high and pathetic my voice has gotten. It must be obvious to Nessiah just how scared I’m feeling. “Please don’t hurt her anymore.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Nessiah says, and takes a step forward. The cold sound of his feet on the bare floor makes me flinch.

“You’re wrong! She was calling for me! She—she knew my name, she wanted me to save her!”

Nessiah says nothing. He narrows his eyes a little.

There’s this long, horrible, tense moment as I watch him and he stares down at me. I don’t know what he’s doing, or why, or how he hurt this girl, or if he’d be willing to hurt _me._ I’m shaking. I’m sure he can see it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do—I just know that I can’t abandon someone who came to me for help.

Then:

“Gulcasa!”

Nessiah turns. I turn. Yggdra is standing there with a fire extinguisher, her pale hair flying around her and her glare trained on Nessiah. Now isn’t the time to think about complicated stuff. I hoist the girl up—she’s lighter than she looks—and run. Yggdra blasts Nessiah with the contents of the extinguisher, and throws the whole thing into the big cloud of gas and smoke it makes.

“Come on!” she yells, and she runs for the store entrance. I follow her.

 _“That’s_ your new transfer student?!” Yggdra wants to know while we flee. She’s quiet just long enough to look for my nod, then goes back to growling. “You all said he was a space cadet, but this? Attacking people in _cosplay?_ Not as though this girl here has any better taste in clothes—who is she, Gulcasa?”

“I don’t know.” I flick my gaze down at her. She’s limp as a stack of rags in my arms and about half as light. Her limbs dangle at awkward angles. “I don’t know, but—we’ve got to get her out of here!”

In front of me, Yggdra’s feet slow to a stop. I look up.

“But the entrance was here,” she says. “It’s supposed to be here. The path is mostly straight. It’s not that big, we couldn’t have taken a wrong turn—what’s going on?”

The air is rippling. Colors that were dim in the late afternoon light have turned oversaturated, making my eyes hurt. Something far off is rattling. What should have been the door and exit sign are distorted, like something a kid might draw in crayon. The surroundings look like they’re made of torn paper and rippled glass. Patterns of text in a language I can’t read creep around the walls, making lists like a table of contents.

“This is a dream,” Yggdra says. “This has got to be a dream. These things don’t happen in normal life. This is a nightmare, and we’re going to wake up any minute now.”

The rattling noises are getting louder. When I turn around, there are _things_ coming up on us. They have tall glass bodies and metal caps, and inside their clear bodies, leaves that I recognize as fresh herbs rain down from nowhere, drying up and making piles of chopped oregano, basil, all different kinds of spices. They look almost like giant salt and pepper shakers, but they have stubby limbs that grasp onto gigantic knives, at least as long as Yggdra is tall.

The _things_ are whispering. As they get closer, the seams of their caps and bodies open up into crinkled-paper mouths. They whisper, but I don’t understand a word they’re saying. Their language hurts my head. All I can tell is that they mean us harm.

Yggdra reaches out and pushes me behind her, pinning me between her body and what should’ve been the exit. But I don’t know what she thinks she can do without a weapon, and the _things_ keep coming.

There’s a rattle, and the ceiling explodes and comes down on top of the monsters. The closest ones to us crumble into glass shards and dust. The distant ones chitter angrily and wave their weapons.

“Oh wow, that was pretty close,” says the last voice I expected to hear in a place like this. “But everything’s gonna be okay now.”

 _“Siskier?”_ Yggdra says. She looks at me for a minute. Her eyes are rimmed white all around. She sounds appalled, if anything. Like she’s still not sure whether to believe this is really real or just a joke in bad taste. I think that says more about life with her sisters than her actual ability to accept the weirdness of our situation though.

“Yep, it’s me!”

It is Siskier. She walks down the art-student’s-wet-dream hallways, calm as you please. She’s carrying something with the color of her eyes and the shape of an egg in her left hand. She hasn’t changed out of her school uniform. The weird colors of the world around us reflect on her face, her hair, and her white stockings. Her black leather Mary Janes clack happily on the ground. She doesn’t seem surprised that the world looks like this. She’s actually grinning all embarrassed, like she didn’t expect us to see her here and not the other way around.

“Siskier, what—” All I can do is shake my head. “What is all this?”

She shrugs, making the same pained sort of smile. “I guess since the cat’s out of the bag anyway, I’m gonna have to explain some things to you two. But before that…”

Siskier turns. The ungainly spice shaker things are climbing over the wrecked ceiling.

“…I want to wrap up a little work!”

She holds the egg thing up. The next moment, a fierce whirlwind bursts from around her, followed by an even fiercer light. I can’t even hold up an arm to shield my face with this girl in my arms, so I watch her through a squint.

Siskier is dancing.

In the middle of the light, she laughs and twirls around, drawing a circle around her with the tip of her shoe. Her stockings melt away, replaced by white boots with high heels. When she brushes her hands through her hair, a white flower with a blue jewel in the middle blooms above her right ear. Her skirt turns bright blue and then white, and lengthens into a long white cloth trimmed in blue, fastened at her left hip. There’s black spats on underneath, and when Siskier swings her hips with a flourish, some gauzy fabric sprouts along the edges of the long skirt-ish thing.

She keeps twirling, slow and elegant like a ballerina, and presses her hands to her chest. As she drags them down to her middle, her blazer and shirt fall away in a bunch of flower petals to reveal a blue and white halter top with a design like a butterfly in the middle of the band. The blue light swirls around her arms to make opera gloves in the same color.

I’ve never seen Siskier move so, so, so _elegantly._ She makes it all look effortless. It’s _beautiful._

And seeing something so pure—just the way that she looks so happy and calm in the middle of this horrible place—is like watching a miracle happen.

The wind dies down. When Siskier lifts her hand, there’s a crossbow in it.

She runs up to the rubble in those light, playful steps, perching at the very top. Once she’s there, she starts to shoot at the monsters. Every time she fires a bolt, it shatters one. She doesn’t have a quiver, and she doesn’t have actual bolts that she reloads each time. Every time she pulls the firing mechanism back into place, a new arrow made of light springs up in the crossbow itself, ready to be shot.

When the first wave of monsters are broken glass on the ground, Siskier tosses her weapon up into the air to twirl end over end. She claps her hands and spins in a circle, and when she dips to catch the crossbow it looks different from before. There’s a magazine attached to it, and the arch of the bow is bigger and wickeder. Siskier has to hold it with two hands now.

She squares her feet and pulls the trigger.

It’s a gatling bow. She turns and turns and arrows fly out of the thing like rain, destroying more monsters wherever they land.

But the things keep surging forward, waving knives of all sizes as they come. Siskier looks over them and leaps backwards, flipping her lower body over. She touches her chest and spreads her arms wide, and flowers bloom all over the ceiling and the air around her. Each one opens on a new crossbow, hanging suspended in midair.

Siskier swings her arm, and all the bows go off. The light from their arrows grows brighter and brighter, until I can’t see anything. All I can hear is the sharp report of crossbows firing, the explosions of arrows hitting their targets, and the angry noises the monsters make.

When the dust clears—when Siskier lands—there aren’t any of the things left. The air bends and warps, and we’re all standing at the entrance of the closed store again.

I let all my breath out in relief. I have no idea what’s going on, but Siskier just saved our lives.

Siskier turns to look up at the top of some high piles of crates and grins. She looks triumphant and mischievous, like she just pulled ahead of a rival in some game. “The witch got away. You should hurry and go after it.”

There’s the soft rustling of fabric and a light sound of footsteps. Nessiah steps out of the shadows, looking down at us with the same expressionless face as ever.

Actually, he’s staring at me again. “I have concerns other than the witch, if it is all the same to you.”

Siskier’s grin gets wider

I wonder what it is about that smile that makes me feel cold all over. I’ve never felt that Siskier was scary. Even when we first got to know each other, when I was wary of people in general, I was never afraid of her particularly. But her expression now is so icy it’s terrifying.

“Y’know, the way you took care of all the problems and things in class, I’d’ve thought you could take a hint better than this,” she says. “Guess it’s true what they say about book smarts only taking you so far. I’m telling you that I’ll let you go without a fuss.”

Nessiah shifts his gaze to the side, staring directly at her now. He doesn’t say anything.

Siskier cocks her head, still grinning. “Even with the school as neutral ground, don’t you think it’d be best to avoid any unnecessary trouble?”

“…As you like,” Nessiah says, and turns. He disappears back into the shadows. I can hear his footsteps trailing off.

 

 

Siskier says that she’ll explain all this in a little while, but there’s something to take care of first. She and Yggdra get a tarp from the remodeling and spread it out on the ground, and then she has us all sit there. She turns back into her uniform, and tells me to put the girl down on the tarp. With Yggdra and me watching, she holds out the egg-shaped thing and makes it glow somehow, holding it close to the girl’s body. Slowly, her scrapes and cuts close up.

Finally, the girl blinks and sits up. Siskier folds the egg into her hand. When she opens her palm up again, there’s a silver ring sitting in her palm. I recognize it as a ring she’s been wearing on her left hand for a long time.

The girl grins. “Yaaaay! Thank you, Siskier!”

Siskier grins back and shrugs. “If you’re gonna thank anybody, it should be these two. I just passed by at a good time, that’s all.” To us, she says, “This is Pamela. She’s… I guess you could call her a friend?”

The girl—Pamela—turns her grin on me and Yggdra now. She looks even more cartoonishly out of place awake than she did asleep.

“Hi, Gulcasa! Hi, Yggdra!”

Yggdra jumps a little in her seat. “How do you know our names?”

“Why wouldn’t I know them?” says Pamela. She’s still smiling. “I came here to ask you two a big favor!”

“What kind of favor?” I ask her.

Pamela claps her hands happily, like a little kid. “I want you to make a contract with me, and become Puellae Magi!”


	3. Chapter 3

It’s been a while since I last visited Siskier’s apartment. Usually we all go out together after club meetings, or she comes over to my house. She usually says that her place is too small, but that’s just modesty. It’s pretty spacious for an apartment, and it’s even got a loft. It’s got nice furniture, a kitchen that makes me just as happy as the one at my own house, and a good TV. I think that her insistence on playing in other places is either because she thinks I’ll be more comfortable at my mother’s house—which is dumb, Siskier’s house was mine and Jenon’s sanctuary for a long time—or because she’s avoiding her dad, since her parents’ divorce.

Her dad’s not home today. He’ll be out of town for a couple of months, she said a while ago—some political campaign something or other. I’ve already forgotten what. I don’t pay that much attention to politics.

So maybe that’s part of the reason she asks me and Yggdra over to her house to talk about things. Then again, if she were to invite herself over to my place or Yggdra’s, she’d have our siblings wanting to play. Aegina might respect her asking them not to intrude, but Luciana sure wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t trust Emilia not to listen at the keyhole or the door hinges.

It takes some convincing to make Pamela take her boots off, but in the end all our shoes get lined up in the foyer. Yggdra makes tea, Siskier heats up meringue lime pie, and I make karaage and french fries for all of us. By the time the fries are brown at the edges, I feel much better. The weird monsters and Nessiah’s cold behavior are already distant as a dream.

Then we join Pamela at the living room table, which is low enough to sit at. There are cushions for everybody.

“Thank you for the food,” we say. Pamela starts eating without saying anything. I’m not sure what I think about that, but at least everything came out nicely.

Once Siskier has cleaned her plate, she leans back on her hands and looks at the ceiling. “Hmm, where to start. I guess the obvious is—I’m a Puella Magi. I became one in a contract with Pamela.”

“Then, the first thing to ask is—what is a Puella Magi?” Yggdra is watching Siskier closely. She folds her hands on top of her knees.

Siskier grins. Her shoulders shake like she’s suppressing a laugh. “Well—I guess we’re magical girls!”

“Puellae Magi is the plural,” Pamela says suddenly. “And it’s Puer Magi for a boy. But mostly I make contracts with girls! There’s not many boys with the potential to do it.”

“Then, what’s the contract about?” I ask.

“Well!” Pamela puffs her chest out. “When you make a contract with the great Pamela, the messenger of magic, I will grant you each exactly one wish! Anything you can think of is okey-dokey! I can make any miracle happen for you!”

_Anything?_ I look at Yggdra, who’s looking at me with her eyebrows raised. “That seems like a lot to offer.”

Yggdra smiles. “So one could theoretically ask for gold and silver treasures, or eternal beauty, or a banquet fit for a true king?”

Siskier nods seriously. “Yeah. She’s really not kidding. Even things that are impossible for us, she can make happen for you.” She takes off her ring and closes her hand around it. When she opens her fingers up, it’s turned back into the egg-like thing that we saw her with earlier. Now that I can see it close up, I can tell that it’s some sort of smooth jewel set into a metal base and stand, with bands of metal around it. There’s a symbol like a flower on top of it, and set into the band. The jewel is the same color as her eyes. “This is a Soul Gem. They’re made in a Puella Magi’s contract with Pamela. They’re the source of our magical power, and they’re proof of what we are. Usually they look like rings when we’re not using them, and even if you can’t feel their magic, you can tell somebody’s a Puella Magi ‘cause they’ll have a mark on their fingernail.”

“But! Once you have a Soul Gem—” Pamela wags her finger— “it is then your destiny to fight with witches!”

“You’re not a witch?” I can’t help but ask. She looks like one, anyway.

“Of course not!” Pamela crosses her arms over her chest. “The great Pamela is a messenger of magic, I told you so before.”

“Then, how are they different from magical girls?” Yggdra asks, lifting her teacup for a sip.

“They’re monsters,” Siskier says. “You remember the things I saved you from, right? Those were a witch’s familiars. The witch itself is a worse monster than those. It created them.”

I can’t stop a shudder from running through my body.

“Puellae Magi are the mascots of hope!” Pamela stops in the middle of her speech to fork off a chunk of pie and eat it. “Witches,” she says after a hearty swallow, “are the bringers of despair. They spread curses and hatred and bad feelings like that, the kinda thing that rot you humans from the inside out.”

Siskier nods. “A lot of unexplained murders, fatal accidents, and suicides are actually caused by witches.”

“Witches are fraidy cats and always hide in barriers though, so people can’t see them,” Pamela continues. “Only Puellae Magi can hunt them down on purpose and fight them.”

“What Pamela means by a witch’s barrier is the kind of place that you two wandered into today,” Siskier says. “You’re really lucky that I came by just then. It’s almost impossible for an ordinary human to escape a barrier once you get lost inside it.”

I’m shaking again. I’d felt better since I got to cook, but this is much worse than before. “Siskier, you—you fight things like that all the time?”

She looks at me, drops her gaze for a moment, and then raises her head again. “Yeah. I had a wish that I got Pamela to grant for me. She told me early on that I’d have a responsibility to fight if I did it, but I accepted because it was a wish I wanted to come true no matter what. Besides, Mitakihara is my territory. If I don’t fight the witches here, innocent townspeople will be their victims.”

Yggdra scratches the edge of her jaw. Her eyes are narrowed and pensive. “Then… Siskier, you’re a magical girl, a superhero. What about that transfer student, that Nessiah? Isn’t he a—a Puer Magi too? Then why didn’t he care about the witch? Why was he chasing after Gulcasa instead?”

“He wasn’t after Gulcasa, he was after me,” Pamela says matter-of-factly. “I bet he wanted to stop Gulcasa from making a contract.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.” I shake my head. “With what witches can do to people, wouldn’t it be better for lots of Puellae Magi to team up and fight them together? The more allies you have, the less dangerous it is, right?”

Siskier smiles at me and shakes her head. “Sorry, but nope. It’s really rare for Puellae Magi to actually be able to cooperate with one another. I told you Mitakihara is my territory, right? Well, when you defeat a mature witch, you get rewards. They’re pretty limited resources! So we wind up fighting over them a lot of the time.”

Yggdra scowls. “So he spends all day harassing Gulcasa and then attacks Pamela just so that he’ll have less competition? The nerve…!”

“It’s really too bad, but that’s just the way it is,” Siskier says. “Anyway! I’ve got a suggestion for you two. It’s pretty hard to ask you to make up your minds about whether or not to become Puellae Magi just talking like this, right? So, do you want to come along when I hunt witches for a little while? You don’t get the chance to have any wish in the world granted every day and all, so I want you guys to have as much info as you can and think really hard about it before you make a choice.”

“Is that—okay? We’re not gonna get in your way or anything?”

She smiles at me. “Not at all! I’ve been doing this whole Puella Magi thing for a good couple of years now, so I know what I’m doing. I should be able to protect you two as long as you stick close and follow my directions. I’d be a failure of a senpai if I couldn’t manage at least that.”

Yggdra nods. “That does sound like a good idea. If it’s not too much trouble, I would very much like to accept. Now that we already know so much, I don’t believe it will be so easy to simply turn a blind eye.”

I bite my lip. I’m not brave or curious like Yggdra. But Siskier seemed to have the fight earlier today pretty much in hand. And besides that… now I think I understand a lot of things better. When Siskier leaves parties and things early, when she turns down invitations to do things, it’s not because she doesn’t want to be there or is just doing a bad job of trying to be considerate to the rest of us. It’s because she’s been fighting witches. It’s because she’s been saving people, like she saved us today.

I know that I’m more or less useless. But Siskier’s been fighting to protect me and everybody else for a long time. If there’s any way that I could support her… even if it’s scary, if I knew it was something I could do—

“Yeah. I’ll do it too.”

Siskier smiles at us, but her eyes seem sad somehow.

“I’m really sorry I’ve had to keep this a secret all this time. I had no idea that you two also had the potential to become Puellae Magi like me, but… even then, I might’ve still lied to you about the truth for as long as I could. Though, I guess… since you guys walked right into a witch’s barrier anyway, there’s no point in wondering about what-ifs anymore.”

She stands up. Her smile changes to the warm and dependable one that’s always made me feel better.

“I promise, I’ll take care of you two to the best of my ability. You’re going to get a real education on what it means to be Puellae Magi instead of learning everything by feel like I had to. I wanna give you guys the kinds of chances that I didn’t have. You’ll have much more freedom to consider your wishes than I did.”

Just the way she says it makes me so curious that I can’t help but ask: “So, Siskier, what did you wish for when you made the contract?”

And, for some reason I can’t fathom, she blushes and looks away even as her smile gets wider.

“I’m not gonna tell you. No, I don’t think I could ever tell you. But—I’m proud that that’s what I wished for. No matter what happens, I won’t regret becoming a Puella Magi for this.”

 

 

My mother scolds me for getting home late, but my head’s so full of what I’ve learned from Siskier that I don’t have much room for feeling bad. I’m glad I did my homework during our club meeting while we were eating cookies, because even when I take my notebook out to check my class notes, I just wind up doodling in the margins and thinking about Siskier taking down those familiars.

Siskier’s always been… active, I guess what you’d call sporty, but I’ve never seen her move like that. I had no idea she could shoot a crossbow, let alone make tons of them appear out of thin air. She didn’t seem scared of the familiars at all, as if they were just really ugly small-fry enemies in an RPG and she was EXP-farming. And they didn’t have a chance against her. The way she fought was stylish. It was _cool._

I can’t really picture myself fighting from a distance, like she does. My hands are clumsier unless I can practice a lot, like with cooking, and I don’t really have faith in my aim. Fighting those scary things up-close might be scarier—I hate getting hit—but with a strong enough weapon in hand, and with Siskier watching my back… If Yggdra were with us, too…

…………I’m daydreaming like a little kid before I realize it.

It’s a little embarrassing, but I don’t think I have any other choice. I pick up my notebook and head over to Emilia’s room.

“I’ll help you study if you help me with a design thing,” I tell her from the doorway.

My sister raises an eyebrow at me, twisted around in her chair to look at me so that her hair is dangling down onto the floor. “What, have you got some art assignment or something?”

“…Something like that.”

My drawing skills are, frankly, not great. But Emilia pays attention to things like fashion, and she’s got a real eye for little details. As long as I’m dreaming up outfits and such, I might as well get advice from somebody who knows what she’s doing and probably won’t laugh too much.

When I tell Emilia that I’m supposed to be thinking up ideas for a costume, she barely even stops to ask me what for before she litters the floor with books and books of her favorite manga and drags her laptop over to google stuff. She spends about half her time doodling and the other half lecturing, and she quizzes me on Siskier’s magical girl costume until I’m reciting details that I didn’t even know I noticed. I also learn more about the history of the waistcoat than I think anybody even needs to know.

Once I agree to some things, Emilia takes my notebook away and starts drawing in earnest. I’m left to lean against her bed and watch. That gets kind of boring after a while, but I know better than to start reading her books.

“…Hey, Emilia?”

“What?”

“If… y’know, just hypothetically… if somebody ever told you that they’d grant any wish you could make, what would you ask for?”

She twists her mouth to one side and then starts to grin. “I’d have the vice president and some of the senpai in the costumes club conveniently disappear for me. I mean, not to rag on them or anything, but like… their taste sucks, y’know? And they’re bad at listening to the underclassmen, and they don’t know history of clothes. They can’t even coordinate a kimono right, it’s totally pathetic. And the club president is wishy-washy and lets all the third-years push her around. It’s all she’s done since she got her position.”

Apparently my sister is ambitious. And a snob. And her imagination is violent. “In that case, why not just wish to be the president instead?”

Her pencil stops. Her eyes narrow. She leers at the notebook and strokes her chin.

“I didn’t think of that.”

“Emilia, your expression’s getting kinda scary.”

She giggles like I’m complimenting her, kicks her feet in the air, and goes back to drawing.

 

 

We get our next big surprise on the walk to school. Yggdra and I meet up with Jenon first, and when Siskier shows up—

“Good morning, everybody!”

“Heyo!”

—Pamela is trailing along after her.

Yggdra and I both jump. Jenon looks at us like we’re crazy. Siskier just smiles at us.

_Don’t worry about it—people with no potential to become Puellae Magi can’t see or hear Pamela._

We both jump again. Siskier laughs and sticks her tongue out at us.

_I forgot to tell you last night, we can talk about things telepathically. It ought to be useful when we’re in front of people like Jenon, right?_

_Then—don’t tell me that we already have some sort of magical power, even though we haven’t made a contract yet?_ Yggdra’s voice booms in my head as she goggles at Siskier.

“Nope! The great Pamela is just patching you through mind to mind. You can do it by yourself once you’re a Puella Magi though!”

_But Siskier, are you really sure that it’s okay to bring her to school?_ …Even I can do it, when I try. This is really weird. _Nessiah’s gonna be there in our own class._

_School should actually be the safest place for Pamela right now,_ Siskier says. _I’ll be there to protect her, and I don’t think Nessiah is likely to try anything in a crowded classroom. That goes for you two, also—you don’t have to be afraid of Nessiah while I’m around._

Jenon, who’s been watching all this looking puzzled, suddenly frowns.

“What is up with you guys? You just keep staring into each other’s faces not saying a word…”

“Um—well.” I can’t think of a good excuse, and look to Siskier and Yggdra for help.

“Oh, god.” Jenon edges back. “Don’t tell me—don’t tell me that you’re already at the level where you can understand each other just by gazing into each other’s eyes! Gulcasa, you bastard, you’ve been popular with the girls for a while, but I never thought that you… that you…! Both of them?! How greedy can you get?!”

…Uh. I’m not sure I like where this is going. “Jenon, calm down and quit jumping to conclusions. This is not what you think it is, okay?”

My idiot friend tips his chin back to look down his nose at me. “Then, kindly provide me with an explanation as to why you’re so cuddly with the ladies as of this morning.”

“Jenon?” This is Yggdra, who is smiling really dangerously. “Whatever his numerous other faults, Gulcasa is not like you.”

“What do you mean, ‘numerous other faults’?”

Yggdra makes a very rude hand gesture at me without even turning to face me. “So please don’t confuse the reason _you_ would have if you and two girls were acting like this with the reason Gulcasa has.”

“Yeah, really, why do you think girls don’t like you?” Siskier adds. “It’s just that stuff happened last night, you know?”

Her choice of words makes Jenon’s jaw drop. _“Stuff?_ What _stuff_ could this be, that made you all so close over one night? Gulcasa, I thought I knew you! And now you’re telling me that your naïve act is nothing but an act?!”

My head’s starting to hurt, here. “And _I_ thought _you_ had enough sense that you’d be able to see why you should trust Yggdra and me saying _there’s no way in hell_ instead of Siskier picking on you. How many years have you known us all, again?”

But Jenon’s not listening. He throws one hand out dramatically and covers his eyes with the other. “No. Don’t speak to me anymore, traitor!”

And he runs off down the road, leaving us all standing still and watching his back get smaller against the distant outline of the school.

“Your species behaves really strangely about reproduction,” Pamela remarks at last. “I don’t get it.”

“You can say that again,” I tell her.

 

 

We leave Siskier to settle things with Jenon during lunch hour and go up to the rooftop ahead of her. Pamela, who seems interested in our box lunches, comes with us.

It’s quiet for a long while. Today’s weather is nice, and the sky is a pattern of white on blue. I’m glad that it’s warm and that we’re able to eat up here, after a whole winter of being stuck inside in the noisy classroom and cafeteria.

“Gulcasa, have you come up with any wishes?” Yggdra asks suddenly.

“No. What about you?”

“I can’t think of any, either. It’s a little funny, wouldn’t you say? Of course there’s any number of things that I want to have or do, but I don’t think that any of those are worth risking my life over.”

Pamela stares at us from the bench across from ours. “That’s strange! Most kids I ask come up with a wish right away.”

Yggdra shakes her head. “That’s not altogether unexpected, though. Wouldn’t you think, Gulcasa? I’m sure that there are plenty of people in the world who have wishes that they would be willing to fight for. For instance, those who live in poor countries or war zones…”

When she puts it that way—she’s right. I should know that a lot better than her.

What would have happened if I’d met Pamela earlier than three years ago? If I’d been told there was a hope of getting away from my old man, as long as I was willing to put my life in danger fighting evil? That’s so obvious there’s no point in thinking about it. I’d’ve said yes. I’d’ve thought anything was better than living like that. They say that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, but I bet my younger self would’ve jumped the gun and wished all the bad in his life away, because nothing would’ve been worse than that. And that’s the kind of reasoning that made me decide to give living with my mother a try. No matter what, I’d already lived through hell, so whatever she might do wouldn’t faze me.

But my mother actually takes care of me. I have a happy life now, good friends and a home where I can feel safe. Maybe younger me was one of those people who’d fight for their wishes without a second thought, but I’m not that kid anymore. And it’s because I know exactly the worth of what I have that I’m having a hard time thinking of what kind of wish would be so important to me it’d justify compromising that.

“In my case, I think it’s just that I’m ignorant. Blissfully ignorant,” Yggdra says. “I’ve never known the kind of misfortune that would make someone so desperate. And yet—here we are, being offered carte blanche as payment for fighting the evils of the world. Don’t you think this is unfair? There are probably so many other people in the world who would want this kind of chance. Why us?”

Yggdra falls silent then. The only noise is the rush of the wind around us. Not even Pamela makes a sound. So when the door opens, it’s so sudden and so loud that I jump up from my seat.

It’s not Siskier. It’s Nessiah.

Yggdra leaps up right away and stands between me and the intruder. “So you intend to continue off from yesterday now that Siskier isn’t here, do you?!”

Nessiah tilts his head to the side. “No, I have no intention of doing so. I had wanted to settle things before that thing came in contact with Gulcasa, but it’s too late now anyway.” He straightens up. He’s staring at me just like always, making me feel like ice is creeping down my spine. “Do you remember what we spoke about yesterday?”

“…Yeah.”

“Good.” He turns away, still half-glancing over his shoulder. “I certainly hope that my warning was not in vain.”

As he reaches for the door, I don’t really know what it is that makes me stand up. Impulsiveness, I guess. “Nessiah—”

He stops with his fingers on the handle.

“What did you wish for when you became a—”

Nessiah looks over his shoulder at me, and I shut up. He punctuates his departure with the heavy sound of the door.

Yggdra lets out a long breath. Her stance relaxes a little. “I really don’t like him.”

 

 

Jenon is still sulking and Luciana and Aegina are still busy with fencing, so we call off today’s club meeting. Siskier sets up a date for the three of us at the mall’s food court in the evening, so that Yggdra and I will have a couple hours to go home and get ready.

We all get to the food court at the same time. I’m so nervous that I don’t know if I can eat, but Yggdra reminds me that those who don’t eat before battle are eaten by battle, and I wind up buying a bowl of ramen anyway. Siskier has a hot dog and a cup of chili, and Yggdra orders a chicken burger and an extra-large container of fries, which we all wind up sharing. Especially Pamela.

“Anyway, I guess it’s time for us to get started on Puella Magi Life 101,” says Siskier when we’re all mostly done. She’s changed out of her uniform like Yggdra and me, and I can tell she’s getting some stares because of the tattoo on her arm. She got it a while ago, I think to piss her dad off, but because it fits under short sleeves I almost forget it’s there except when she’s wearing her own clothes.

…And actually, come to think of it, her Puella Magi costume showed a lot of skin, didn’t it? I wonder if that’s why she’s gotten into wearing less and less recently. Maybe I should just ask her, but that’d be a little awkward.

“I’m not sure whether it will be of any actual use or not, but…” Yggdra holds up the long, narrow bag she came carrying over her shoulder. “I brought my wooden sword from kendo anyway. It will at least be better than nothing, right?”

Siskier covers a giggle. “Well… I’m glad you’re here ready to fight, anyway!” Then she looks at me. “Gulcasa, did you bring anything?”

Uh. I already know I’ve lost to Yggdra in terms of taking things seriously, but I take out my notebook from last night and hand it to her.

Siskier accepts it and opens it. Her eyebrows raise right away, and she starts to giggle again.

“What is it?” Yggdra wants to know. Siskier passes it to her, shaking her head. She’s still laughing.

I shrug. “I just kinda… I thought that even if I can’t decide on a wish yet, I could at least try coming up with an outfit? So I wound up asking Emilia to help, and…”

Siskier is wiping tears from her face, she’s laughing so hard. Yggdra has turned away from me, but her shoulders are shaking like she’s just trying to stay quiet. She holds the notebook out. I take it back and put it away. I should’ve known better than to show this to them.

“You two are going to be great,” Siskier says. “A kendo stick and a bunch of costume designs…! I’m the senpai, and I can’t even top that. I can tell you both, um, put your hearts into your preparations.”

We return our trays and throw out our trash, and leave the food court. I’m still red in the face, but at least I’m not getting laughed at anymore. Siskier takes us to the same closed store as last time.

“So, your first lesson is that looking for witches involves a whole lot of footwork,” she says. She turns her ring back into a Soul Gem, and holds it out in the palm of her left hand. “All you can really do is follow the traces of magic that they leave behind.”

“That’s a more ordinary method than I was expecting,” Yggdra remarks. Siskier shrugs and starts walking, and we follow her.

“Unfortunately, there’s not much of a choice. Y’know? Since the witch got away yesterday, its traces are really faint. I hope you guys are ready with excuses for your parents if this takes a while.”

My mother’s going to be at work until late, so I shouldn’t run into any trouble there. Yggdra makes a face and says that she’ll think of something if it comes to that.

But there’s something that I can’t help but worry about more than that. “Then, Siskier, if you’d just been able to chase after the witch right away…”

She laughs it off, waving her free hand. “Aw, you don’t have to worry about that! It’s true that hunting for witches is important, but I couldn’t just ignore you two and leave Pamela to make the explanations. I mean, you’ve seen what she’s like—”

“Siskier, are you saying that the great Pamela’s explanations are no good?”

Siskier purses her lips. “I don’t know if they’re completely no good, but you’re most concerned with the contracts themselves, so you leave stuff out. I can’t even count the number of things I had to learn on the fly. I don’t want it to be like that for Gulcasa and Yggdra, okay?”

“I don’t get it,” Pamela says, and shrugs.

“And I’m telling you that that’s the problem,” Siskier tells her. She doesn’t actually sound annoyed, though, so it seems like they’ve had this conversation so much it’s routine now.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Siskier looks at me and shakes her head.

“No, really, I mean it! You and Yggdra are a lot more important than witches. It’s not like we won’t be able to find this one, either.”

Yggdra is nodding. “Siskier, you sound so responsible. It’s easy to imagine how you’ve been taking care of this city all this time. You really are a hero.” She scowls. “That Nessiah, on the other hand… I don’t know where he gets the idea that all that passive-aggressive nonsense is acceptable.”

“I don’t get why we can’t all just get along,” I say.

Siskier smiles crookedly. “It would be nice if we could, but… both parties have to think that way for it to work out like that, you know?”

I don’t really know about that. Siskier and Yggdra are so on guard against Nessiah already, but I wonder if he really is as bad as they say? It seems a little early to jump to that conclusion. And besides, when he warned me… he seemed more worried about my well-being than anything.

But I really get the feeling that it’s better to keep those thoughts to myself for now.

“When you don’t have a witch that you’re already tracking, where do you usually look?” asks Yggdra. Apparently, we’re back to business.

“Well, a witch’s curse usually has the most effect in big gathering places where accidents and fights might break out,” Siskier explains. “The other thing you have to look out for is quiet, out-of-the-way spots that seem like a place where someone might try suicide. Oh, and the worst-case scenario is when a witch sets up a barrier on a hospital. The people there are already weak, so if a witch tries to drain their life energy, it can get ugly really fast.”

We’re outside the mall and walking down the city streets by now. The sun’s going down. It’s gonna get cold soon. I’m glad I came wearing long sleeves.

Siskier stops all of a sudden. Yggdra and I almost keep walking for a while before we notice. She’s looking down at her Soul Gem, which is shining brightly in her hand.

“It’s reacting to some strong magic,” she says. “The witch might be close to here.”

 

 

We follow the trail to an old abandoned building.

“You guys need to listen to any directions I give you and stay close to me unless I tell you otherwise,” Siskier says. Her eyes are intense. She’s missing her usual carefree smile. “This is a matter of life and death. I am _not_ going to be responsible for my friends dying. Keep thinking about wishes. I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m pretty sure I can handle anything that’s not a Walpurgisnacht by myself, but there’s always going to be a possibility of my needing help.”

I kind of want to ask what a Walpurgisnacht is, but I’m also really worried by what Siskier’s implying. I nod to show I’ll listen. Yggdra is nodding too.

There’s a distant clanking noise. I look around, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody here.

“Pamela, you said that witches always hide in barriers, right?” I ask, but before she can answer, Yggdra points upwards.

There’s a person on top of the building. There’s a person who’s standing on the edge of the building, too distant for me to be able to see what they look like. The person jumps off the building even as we watch, and comes hurtling down towards us.

I hide my face. Yggdra cries out something, maybe a warning—and Siskier’s shoes crunch in the grit under our feet. When I peek, she’s jumped up into the air, holding the person—an office lady, it looks like—in her arms. She’s transformed into her Puella Magi clothes. That must be how she managed to leap up high enough to catch someone falling from that height.

 When Siskier jumps back down, she kneels and lays the office lady out on the ground. The lady’s eyes are closed, and she lies bonelessly like some kind of really lifelike doll. I can’t look at the tilt of her head too long.

“A witch’s kiss,” Siskier mutters. “I knew it. Gulcasa, Yggdra, you come look at this.”

We crowd around the unconscious lady, and Siskier points to a dark sparkling mark on her neck.

“People who have been enchanted by a witch will have one of these somewhere on their body. As long as it’s still there, the witch’s control won’t be broken. But they’ll disappear if the witch dies.” She touches the mark, and the jewel on her hairpin glows. The witch’s kiss thing melts under her fingertip.

Siskier stands up and brushes her knees off. “Come on,” she says. “The entrance to the witch’s barrier will be close to here.”

We check around the building. When nothing turns up, we go inside. I can’t see anything out of the ordinary, but Siskier holds a hand up and Yggdra and I stop.

It appears in the air in front of us: Some dark, writhing shape like a doily made out of flat tentacles. It’s got a mark like the witch’s kiss on the lady stamped across it, something that looks like a brace of clothespins around a pair of crossed spoons.

Yggdra takes her sword out of its bag. I breathe deeply. Siskier is with us. We’ll be fine.

Siskier looks the two of us over, and then puts her hand on Yggdra’s sword. Its outline squirms. Yggdra and I both yelp—Yggdra nearly drops her weapon—but when Siskier takes her hand away, it solidifies into a real sword with a bejeweled handle and a naked blade. Yggdra yanks out one of her own hairs and lays it lightly against the sharp edge. It falls to the ground in two pieces, neat as anything. She raises her eyebrows and whistles.

“It’s really not much,” Yggdra says, “but this should be more than enough to protect yourselves with for now. C’mon, follow me.”

She walks straight up to the doily-shaped gate and passes through. Yggdra shifts her grip on her sword and follows. I take a deep breath and make myself go after her. It’s a weird feeling, like I’ve just passed through an oily film.

The other side of the barrier is like someone’s painted the whole building over in crumpled wrapping paper. The door to this place was on the ground floor, but we’re standing on a walkway underneath something like a—a factory, or a kitchen. There’s the same salt shaker monsters there were in the other barrier, doing dances like planes in holding patterns. New _things_ that look like Picasso’s renderings of deck brushes on drugs sweep back and forth across the distant ground.

Siskier makes a crossbow and takes off running. Yggdra and I follow her.

Familiars seem to be lurking around every corner. Siskier shoots most of them before they get anywhere near us. Sometimes they sneak up behind us—Yggdra’s shiny new sword gets a little use—but even then, Siskier twirls around and makes big fans of crossbows appear in midair to fire in timed volleys and finish the things off.

“Why do you make a new crossbow more often than you just make new arrows?” Yggdra asks once.

“It’s faster,” Siskier replies right away. “It takes more magic this way, so I wouldn’t be able to do it if I were running low, but the advantage is that this way I can react quicker and defeat more enemies. It’s simple enough of a strategy. If you’re facing a really strong witch, it’s better to save everything you have for fighting it, and just avoid dealing with familiars if you can.”

“You’ve got a lot of this figured out,” says Yggdra.

“It’s just experience,” says Siskier, but she’s smiling. “How are you two doing? Are you afraid?”

“Not at all!” Yggdra says. It’s a little too quick to be convincing.

Am _I_ afraid? Honestly, I am. Everything’s still really new and confusing, and even with Siskier here to protect us, there’s no getting away from the fact that we could die. But—for some reason, even so—

“Hang in there,” Siskier says. She closes an eye and lifts her arm, pointing at a distant cluster of spice shaker familiars juggling what looks like a pair of red shoes. Flowers form in the air, opening up on crossbows, which fire. “We’re nearly to the middle of the barrier.”

 

 

In the end, Siskier takes us through a door stamped with the same emblem as the witch’s kiss again. She moves quietly down the short hallway and stops at its mouth.

“Take a good look,” she says. “That’s a witch.”

The creature that is huddled in the middle of the amphitheater is the size of a house. It’s—the first phrase that pops into my head to describe it is _non-Euclidean._ It’s—it’s a wreath of viscera, like a braided donut made from guts. It bristles with gigantic human teeth. And there’s—there’s some kind of plant, with leaves like fresh cilantro, growing from in between the ropes of twitching intestine. It’s got _eyes,_ or something like them, flickering out from the gaps in its flesh one second and getting covered back up again.

“It’s _disgusting,”_ Yggdra breathes. Her sword clatters softly. Either she’s shaking, or she’s gripping it to hard.

“You’re—really going to fight that thing?” I ask.

Siskier just grins at us. “Like I’d lose! You guys stay in here—I’ll take care of the rest of this.”

And she just jumps out.

The witch notices her right away. It squirms and _opens,_ flesh pulling back for eyeballs underneath to swivel around and train on Siskier. She looks tiny compared to it. Even so, she points at it with her forefinger. Then she jabs her thumb at the ground, this big overexaggerated motion that even the witch wouldn’t be able to mistake for anything else.

It makes a noise—it sounds like a high wind whistling through leaves—and tendrils of flesh untangle from the web to swing at Siskier. She ducks and rolls, avoiding them with lazy ease.

The witch retracts its tentacles. Its strikes left cracks in the ground, and familiars rise out of them. Siskier pulls a crossbow out from underneath her skirt, and fires at both of them. They’re killed in one shot. But the witch isn’t waiting for her to deal with the familiars first. It unwraps tentacles from its body again and swings at her—three this time. Siskier has to scurry to get out of the way.

Familiars crawl up out of the marks the witch left again, and Siskier jumps up on the bowl of the wall to shoot at them. She has to run to get out of the way of the witch’s strike again.

I don’t understand what she’s doing. Yeah, she won’t be able to fight if she’s getting mobbed by a bunch of familiars, but as long as she doesn’t attack the witch, it’s going to keep attacking her over and over—

She’s made a full circuit around the room before she stops and points up at the ceiling, snapping her fingers. Every dent in the floor that the witch has left, every place she shot down a familiar, a white flowerbud sprouts from the middle of the crater. Siskier raises her other hand slowly. One by one, the petals peel off the flowers in synchronized motion, blown up towards the distant ceiling. When Siskier brings her arms back down to waist level, the petals roll up and start to glow. Each one of them turns into a crossbow.

When they all fire, it’s like a rain of a billion needles fly. The witch makes a loud screeching noise. Some dark brown fluid sprays wherever it’s pierced, going up in plumes. The rain of arrows rips the witch apart. It unravels and crashes to the ground, cut into a hundred twitching segments.

Siskier laughs and brings her hands up again. She twirls once, then once more. When I look up, the crossbows have all rotated to point at the ground and are lifting higher and higher.

The arrows all loose at once. The witch, or what’s left of it, screams so loud that I have to cover my ears. The brown stuff that must be its blood sprays again.

Siskier’s artillery winks out like so many stars. The air around us starts to bend and wrinkle, and the remains of the witch vanish with the barrier. Siskier is already walking to where the witch was, picking up a little black-and-silver thing from what’s now the floor of the abandoned building again.

“That’s amazing,” Yggdra says at last. “You beat it like—just like _that.”_

Siskier grins at us and holds up the thing that was on the ground. “Come look at this,” she says.

We come look at it. It’s a black sphere wrapped in silver-colored wire, balanced on what looks like a long, thick pin. There’s a silver bobbin on top of it, in the shape of some kind of insignia.

“This is a Grief Seed,” Siskier says. “If you’re lucky, a witch will drop one when you defeat it. They’re witches’ eggs.”

_“Eggs?”_ I try to imagine that grotesque thing somehow emerging from the thing Siskier holds in her hands.

“They’re safe like that!” Pamela says. “Actually they’re useful.”

“Useful how?” Yggdra wants to know.

Siskier changes back to her usual self, and holds up her Soul Gem. “Look. Can you see that the jewel isn’t as bright as it was before?”

“Now that you mention it, I guess so.” Not only is it duller, there’s something dark and flaky around the inside of it that remind me of scum building up on pots after you cook something with them.

“But if you use a Grief Seed… See, watch.” Siskier touches her Soul Gem and the Grief Seed together. The dark flakes come off and get sucked into the black orb of the Grief Seed. Her Soul Gem gets brighter and shinier right away.

Siskier turns her Soul Gem back into the ring on her finger and holds the Grief Seed up in the air, throwing it lightly into a doorway that’s darkened by the sunset. A pale hand reaches out of the shadows to catch it.

“It should still be safe to get used one more time,” says Siskier. “You can have that if you want, Nessiah.”

I know I jump, and I think Yggdra does too. Nessiah emerges from the dark, holding the Grief Seed delicately by its pin.

“Or do you not like sharing?” Siskier asks. There’s that same aggressive leer in her voice as before.

“Thank you, but no,” Nessiah says. “The witch was your prey. You may as well keep your hard-earned spoils for yourself.”

He tosses the Grief Seed underhand. Siskier snatches it out of the air, glaring.

“That’s not polite at all,” Yggdra says, but she says it softly.

“Hunh. So if you’re not after Grief Seeds, then why follow us all this way?” Siskier asks, putting her hands on her hips.

“You’re dragging civilians into a battle that has nothing to do with them,” Nessiah says. His voice is less flat than before. More forceful. “I would prefer it if you no longer do so.”

“They’ve been chosen by Pamela. Learning about witch hunts is their business now, too. Or how else do you expect them to decide whether or not to become Puellae Magi?”

Nessiah narrows his eyes. “Please don’t insult me by giving me that drivel. You’re attempting to influence them to make contracts. It is obvious. And I will not stand for it. _Especially,”_ he says, “in Gulcasa’s case.”

“Oh, so you don’t like my attitude?”

“What you are doing is a nuisance,” Nessiah says.

Siskier smiles at him with her eyes half-closed. I’ve seen her look like this sometimes when she’s picking on Jenon, but the expression’s never looked so grim before, or so mean. “I take it that you can sense their potential just like me.”

Nessiah is silent, leaving me with no clues about what Siskier means.

“So you’re the type that likes to cut off every potential threat before it becomes an issue, huh? The kind that just _can’t stand_ having anybody stronger than you around? That’s such a bully magnet way of thinking.”

I want to be somewhere else right now. _Anywhere_ else. I don’t know why Nessiah’s fixating on me, but I wish I could just tell Siskier that I’m not worth picking fights over.

“Gulcasa and Yggdra are _my_ friends,” Siskier says. “What they decide isn’t up to you. And, honestly? I’m getting tired of you following us around like this. We’re stuck being around each other in school, but I better not catch you stalking us again outside of it. I don’t think we can solve things with words much longer than this, and I _will_ use force to protect these two if I have to.”

Nessiah lets out a long, controlled breath. He turns disdainfully and vanishes into the shadows again.

“Presumptuous ass,” Yggdra says. Siskier shakes her head.

 

 

When we get out of the building, the office worker is starting to sit up. Siskier runs to her side as she blinks around at her surroundings.

“Where—” says the office lady, and then out of nowhere, she bursts into tears. “Why did I…?!”

“It’s okay!” Siskier tells her. “Really, you’re safe now. Nothing happened. You were just having a bad dream, okay?”

……I guess this means the day’s been saved.

I’m still not sure what to think about everything that’s happened. Just watching Siskier fight witches was really frightening, but at the same time—watching her work so hard to protect people is really cool. And when I think that maybe one day I could do what she’s doing, and help others… I can’t help but feel like that’d be really nice.


	4. Chapter 4

Siskier dances underneath the crayon-scribble stars. She leaps over the rubble in the chamber like she’s doing parkour. When the monster like a lantern flies chiming through the air at her, she twists mid-leap and shoots it down in one hit.

The barrier wobbles and disappears. The big clump of pitted darkness Yggdra and I were hiding behind turns into a vending machine, and Siskier changes back into her uniform.

“There’s no Grief Seed this time either,” Yggdra observes. “That’s too bad.”

“That’s because this was a barrier made by a familiar and not a witch,” Siskier explains.

“Oh, so familiars can make barriers too… All the same, isn’t it a bit of a letdown?”

“Well, it’s not like we can afford to leave the familiars to their own devices either!” Siskier stretches up on her toes, smiling. “They’re still dangerous to people, and they can even turn into the same witch as the parent that created them if they prey on enough victims.”

“Spoken like a true hero,” Yggdra says, and Siskier does a mock curtsy, laughing.

“Can you tell if it’s a witch’s barrier or a familiar’s beforehand?” I ask.

“With experience! If you’ve got Pamela with you, she might tell you if you ask, but it’s not good to count on her too much or you’ll never get the feel of it yourself. And getting the feel’s important—if you’re running low on Grief Seeds, it might be too risky to waste all your magic on familiars.

“Luckily for you two, I’ll be around to help you learn to use your magic and see how quickly you’ll need to purify your Soul Gem. Obviously you need to keep your Soul Gem clean ‘cause you’ll run out of magic otherwise, but it’s not good for your health to leave it dirty for long periods of time.”

Siskier buys us drinks from the vending machine—canned coffee for me, strawberry milk for Yggdra, a bottle of ramune for Pamela, and a sports drink for herself. Then we start on the walk back home. It’s already so dark, and it’s a ways back from this park to where we all live.

“So, do you two feel like you’ll be able to come up with any wishes soon?” Siskier asks after a couple minutes’ comfortable silence.

Yggdra makes a long _hmm_ noise and turns to me. “What about you, Gulcasa?”

“Not really…”

Siskier shrugs. “I guess it’s kind of like that, when you’ve got somebody telling you to think of something.”

I wonder again what Siskier wished for. But since she’s already said she doesn’t want to say yet, I guess there’s no point pestering her about it.

“Does your wish have to be for yourself?” Yggdra asks suddenly. She’s frowning seriously. “When Luciana came back from her fencing meet hurt, I thought that maybe it would be better to use this chance to help someone else. I mean, it seems a little wasteful to use my wish for myself if there’s nothing I need that badly…”

“Oh! No, you don’t have to be the target of the wish,” Pamela chirps. “There’s precedent, too!”

But Siskier is making a face. “Yggdra, I know you mean well, but…”

“But what?” Yggdra asks, tilting her head to the side.

“You’ve got to be really careful when it comes to making a wish for someone else’s sake,” Siskier says. She’s started to smile bitterly. “It doesn’t always go well. You’ve got to be really sure of what’s in the person’s best interests, and what you yourself want. Do you want their wish to come true, or do you want to grant their wish for them? Those are totally different things.”

“Isn’t that a little harsh?” I ask her.

“Maybe it is. But I’ve run into other Puellae Magi over the past few years, and—” She cuts herself off and shakes her head. “It can go really badly. I mean, really, _really_ badly. It’d be terrible of me to not warn you ahead of time.”

Yggdra smiles. “Okay. Thank you for telling us, then. I suppose it was a little naïve to say so without thinking it through first.”

Siskier just laughs. “No, there’s no need to feel bad about it! Just take your time. You’re not in any rush, here.”

Pamela shakes her ramune bottle. She’s already drank it all, so the marble in the neck rattles. “The great Pamela would rather you contract sooner instead of later, though!”

“Don’t be a pest,” Siskier says.

 

 

“I guess it’s not that simple, huh,” I say to the ceiling as I lie on my bed.

“Not even the great Pamela can really force you! It’s not even good to make suggestions.”

Siskier told her to shoo because she needs to do homework and Pamela’s too distracting. So she followed me and Yggdra home instead. Emilia’s already asleep, and my mother’s not home yet. Once she does get here, I can always send Pamela next door where she won’t get in the way. Yggdra will probably be more comfortable around her than me, them both being girls and all.

I hold my notebook up and look over Emilia’s pencil-sketched designs. “It’d probably not be good enough to just wish to be one, would it?”

Pamela stares at me for a while. I’m still not used to how she never stops smiling. “Hey Gulcasa, do you just want to have power?”

“I don’t really… actually, maybe I do.” I’d be too embarrassed to say this in front of Yggdra. It’d take courage to bring it up to Siskier, even. Maybe I can run it past Pamela since she’s so different from being a peer, and a little different from a human. “I mean, all I’m really good at is cooking. I’m not smart or brave. I don’t really have redeeming qualities or anything. But the way Siskier fights for people as a Puella Magi is really amazing. If I really could be just like that…”

“But if you ever became a Puer Magi, you’d be way stronger than Siskier,” Pamela says suddenly.

“Eh?”

I look over to her. She’s just staring at me and smiling. She barely blinks. “Not even the great Pamela can determine why yet! There isn’t enough data for a conclusion. But I’ve never met another child with as much potential as you. Of course, your abilities themselves will vary a bit based on what wish you make in the contract—but I can’t even imagine the size of the Soul Gem you could create.”

A chill runs down my back, prickling the hair on the back of my neck. “What are you even talking about? Flattery’s not gonna get you anywhere, you know.” But that weird catfight that Siskier and Nessiah had. They were talking about Yggdra’s and my potential. What if—

No. Thinking about that makes me uneasy, for some reason. “Go bug Yggdra, okay? I ought to do homework too, so my mother won’t have to get after me when she comes back.”

I blink and she’s gone. The chills aren’t going away anytime soon.

 

 

It’s midnight by the time my mother gets home.

I’ve been doing my homework at the tall dinner table since I shooed Pamela out, so I’m there to tell her welcome home. When she gets a glass of water, I keep pretending to do homework when I’m really looking at her through my hair. She sits down and sighs like she’s tired, but it’s the good kind of tired—not the kind that puts me on edge to see, since people who look that kind of worn down and testy tend to take it out on whoever’s around them.

“I _am_ sorry,” she says, “that I have returned late so often these days. The case I’m working on right now is one that we can’t afford to handle poorly, but all the same, I do think you must resent me for it.”

“No way,” I tell her. “Never. Three years isn’t long enough for me and Emilia to forget that we’re here right now because of your job.” I watch her play with her glass for a while. “Besides, you love your job.”

My mother frowns at her glass. She’s running her fingers along the rim to make it make noise. “A great deal of my work is neither exciting nor admirable,” she says suddenly. “Petty lawsuits, mundane crimes. It isn’t at all what I set out to do when I set out to work towards becoming an attorney. I had all these dreams about the kind of dramatic trials that you might see on television—but those only come up rarely. I do not mete out justice on a daily basis.

“But sometimes I do. That five percent or ten percent of my work that’s exactly as I dreamed is what makes all the work I have put into things worthwhile. It was a happy coincidence that brought me to you and Emilia through my work. So I get to see the results of my best efforts whenever I come home. I would be able to stand it even if you two did resent me a little.”

“We wouldn’t. Well, I wouldn’t at least.”

“Listen to me. I truly must be tired, to be debating philosophy with you at this hour.” My mother stands up and stretches her hands. “In confidence—a bit of advice from parent to child, so to speak—if I had those dramatic cases every time, I would be a lot more worn out from work than I am. Even though the rest is petty and boring.”

She takes her glass to the sink and waves goodnight to me. I’m left alone with my thoughts again.

 

 

Club is cancelled again today because Luciana’s still in the hospital for that broken ankle. Apparently she’s going to be discharged soon, but Aegina is staying with her anyway just in case. Yggdra wanted to go visit, and it just never feels the same with only three members in the room. Well—four counting Pamela, but Jenon wouldn’t be able to see her anyway.

So Jenon goes home early, and we make plans with Siskier to meet up for witch hunting afterwards. Yggdra lets me tag along with her and Pamela. She tells me the story of the fencing meet as we walk.

But when we come up on the hospital itself, Yggdra stops in the middle of the sidewalk, glaring over the bike rack.

“Look at that,” she says, and points. I run back up the sidewalk to stand next to her, and when I look in the direction of her finger—

“Is that a _Grief Seed_ stuck in the wall?”

It is a Grief Seed. Yggdra and I push our way through the bikes for a closer look.

The pin is stuck into the hospital wall, with black tendrils of _stuff_ crawling out from the end. The sphere is giving off dark sparkles.

“You two should probably run!” says Pamela. “A witch is gonna hatch out of that soon.”

_“Here?”_ I look at Yggdra, who is biting her thumbnail with a pale face. She’s probably thinking about what Siskier told us about witches in hospitals, like I am.

“Gulcasa, you have a cell phone, right?” she says. “I don’t usually bring mine to school, so—”

I dig in my bag for it—why does whatever you need the most always wind up at the bottom of your schoolbag?—but when I pick it out and try to turn it on, nothing happens.

“Shit,” I say out loud. I was so preoccupied thinking about wishes last night, I forgot to charge it!

Yggdra glares at the Grief Seed for a long moment and then nods.

“All right, this is what we’re going to do,” she says. “Gulcasa, you go get Siskier as fast as you can. I’ll stay here and watch the Grief Seed.”

“That’s—” I start, but Pamela of all people interrupts me.

“That’s dangerous, dumbdumb! It’s true that the witch is going to take a while to actually hatch, but once the barrier appears you won’t be able to get out on your own!”

“But on the other hand, you won’t be able to tell where the witch is once the barrier goes up, right? I can find it and keep watch over it so that when Siskier gets here she can defeat it quickly.” She looks at me. “We can’t ignore a witch in a place like this. My sister and all the other patients will be in danger.”

Pamela tilts her head one way. She tilts it the other way. “Okies, then the great Pamela will stay with you! That way once Siskier gets here we can guide her to the witch’s room with telepathy, and if anything happens Yggdra can still make a contract to get out of trouble.”

My reservations are probably written all over my face, because Yggdra smiles at me. “Just go and get Siskier quickly, okay? I would rather not have to make any old wish on the spot, if I can help it.”

She must be afraid, too—for Luciana, even if she’s not scared for herself—but her smile’s brave and effortless. That’s what convinces me in the end.

“I’ll be back as fast as I can,” I promise, and drop my bag by the bikes so I can really run.

 

 

Yggdra and Pamela are both gone when we get there. The Grief Seed is missing too. I sit down and try to catch my breath; Siskier holds her ring up and makes the entrance to the witch’s maze appear.

_Pamela, how does it look?_ I hear Siskier’s voice in my head, and make myself stand up again.

_We’re still okay! The witch isn’t out yet. It probably won’t hatch for a while._

I sigh with all my might. _Yggdra, how are you doing?_

_I’m fine! It’s actually pretty boring here. Hurry up and let’s take care of this witch, already._

She doesn’t sound afraid at all. It makes me smile.

_Actually,_ says Pamela, _you should come as quietly as you can. Making a bunch of noise or getting in big fights is more likely to wake the witch up early._

_Okay, I’ve got it. We’ll be there soon,_ Siskier replies. She beckons to me, and we both go through the gate.

The witch’s barrier is a weird combination of little girl’s closet and hospital. Everything’s edged in ribbons and cutesy printed patterns, but there are clusters of things like hospital beds and shiny glass bottles with pills like candies piled up in them. Familiars that look like yarn or porcelain dolls march back and forth down the barrier halls, and Siskier and I wind up having to hide behind things a lot.

“I’d really like to tell you and Yggdra off for being too reckless,” Siskier says to me once we’re in a chamber with no familiars there. “But I think you did the right thing for a situation as bad as this. And that’s only because this is a hospital, okay? If this ever happens again in some other place, I need you to both run and worry about finding me after that.”

“This is my fault anyway for not charging my phone,” I tell her.

“Well, I’d still have had to come to the hospital from home,” Siskier says. She takes me by the wrist and helps me up a slope. “And Yggdra might still have insisted on watching the Grief Seed from inside the barrier. It’s kinda pointless to worry about what-ifs, so I don’t think you should beat yourself up about it. You guys handled things the best you knew how. I’m just telling you for future reference.”

“Okay.”

Siskier smiles at me. Then she narrows her eyes and looks over my shoulder. “So, now that we’re in a place where we’re not about to stir up a nest of familiars! I’m pretty sure I told you to stay away from us when we’re not in school.”

I whip around. Nessiah is standing at the entrance to the chamber. He hasn’t changed into his Puer Magi clothes yet, just like Siskier. He sort of fits in with the scenery—his clothes with the cute frilly part, and his pale skin with the hospital part. He’s expressionless as always as he walks up to us.

“I’ll take care of this battle,” he says. “The two of you should retreat.”

“And what do you expect us to do about Yggdra and Pamela? They’re keeping watch over the witch, if you haven’t been listening in long enough to hear that already,” Siskier replies.

“I will see to their safety,” he says, gesturing loosely with one hand. “But you really need to listen to me and retreat.”

Siskier raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms. “And why, exactly, should we trust you?”

“Listen to me for once,” Nessiah says. His hands curl into fists. “This witch isn’t like anything you’ve faced before. What do you think will happen to the _innocent civilians_ you bring along with you in the worst-case scenario?”

Siskier smiles and leaves my side, walking up to him. Nessiah relaxes a little.

“Wow, I am really getting sick of your doom and gloom!” Siskier says cheerfully, and makes a fast gesture in the air. The barrier splits open behind Nessiah, showing a normal hospital hallway behind him. Siskier shoves Nessiah’s shoulders, and he falls through the rip. His back smacks against the wall, and he doubles over with a squeak.

“You idiot,” he says, still on his knees. His voice is breathy and quiet—she must’ve knocked the wind out of him. “I’m telling you that your lives are in danger!”

“Have fun dealing with security,” Siskier says, and waves. The rip in the barrier closes. She brushes her hands off on her skirt, looking satisfied. “That’s him out of our hair, anyway. By the time he gets back to the entrance, we’ll already be at the witch’s chamber.”

And she comes back to take my hand again.

We pass through a few doors, and have to sneak past more familiars. We come into a pit that’s so full of the mismatched dolls that it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to pass, and Siskier feels around a lacy wall until part of it pops up. She leads me into a corridor that’s faintly lit from nothing I can see, with ribbons and pills softly raining to either side of the path.

There’s nothing here. I guess if I’m going to talk about this at all, I might as well do it now.

“Siskier,” I say.

“Uh-huh?” she says.

“I’ve been thinking for a while about what I want to wish for to be a Puer Magi, and…”

“Oh? Do you think you’re about ready to decide?”

“Well—I have an idea, but I don’t know if you’ll like it. I mean, I’m worried that you’ll say I’m not thinking seriously enough, like Yggdra.”

Siskier looks over her shoulder at me, eyes wide. Then she smiles. “I don’t know if I’d have to do that with you! Yggdra’s younger than us, Gulcasa. So it makes sense for her to not be as mature in her thinking.”

I don’t really know about that, but this doesn’t seem like the time to debate it. “Well—I don’t know. The wish I thought of is…”

“Yeah?” Siskier’s back to looking ahead of us.

“Well, there isn’t much I’m good at. I haven’t got any talents that I can be proud of, I’m not brave like you or smart like Jenon, and it’s taken me this long to get rid of all my bad habits. I’ve got a place to be safe aside from just with you two, but I’m still afraid of a lot of things. Like—I know it’s been a while since I’ve had a really bad panic attack or anything, but I know how little it’d take to make another one happen. So I worry about that. I’m afraid of backsliding. I’m afraid of things getting—less safe, in some way or another. These past three years, I’ve been too scared of taking risks to really try to do new things unless I’m forced into them.

“It’s—it’s not the same as when I was with my old man, but I still feel like I’m weak and worthless. It’s just for different reasons.”

“You’re not weak, and you’re not worthless,” Siskier starts, but I shake my head.

“No, just—just listen, okay?” She nods, and I take a deep breath. I wonder where I should start.

We come to a door at the end of the hallway, and Siskier cracks it open. We’re coming up on a walkway over a big chamber. It’s quiet, and there aren’t any familiars. The ceiling’s still raining ribbons and pills for whatever weird witch reason. We go in.

“So, I’ve sorta gotten used to the idea that I’m gonna… I dunno, just sort of keep living aimlessly without ever being able to do anything for anybody. That I’m going to take everything you and Jenon and Emilia and my mom and even Yggdra’s family did for me, and keep it to myself because I don’t have the brains or the balls to share it.

“But then I learned that you’re a Puella Magi, and you do all this amazing stuff all the time, and saving people’s lives is like no big deal to you—and you and Pamela told me that I could do it too, and… Siskier, my wish will come true if I can just be a Puer Magi. Learning that I could be strong and brave and save people like you do has, it’s made me really happy. If I can fight at your side, then I don’t have to be scared, either.”

Siskier’s fingers tighten on my wrist as we walk.

“It’s gonna be hard, you know? You’re gonna lose the time to play and hang out with your friends and family, just like me. You’re going to get hurt and stuff, and there won’t be many people you can talk to about the truth. It’s not really so great to be a Puella Magi.”

I shake my head. “Yeah, but even with all that? I still really look up to you. I want to be just like you.”

Siskier drops my hand and comes to a stop. She doesn’t turn around to face me.

“I’m not worth being looked up to, Gulcasa.”

There’s a note in her voice I’ve never heard before. I stand behind her and listen quietly.

“Look, Nessiah’s right about me. I’ve been making what I do seem all easy and special because I want you and Yggdra to be Puellae Magi with me. I’ve just been pretending to be this—cool reliable senpai person, even though I get scared like everyone else. I’m selfish. I don’t have anybody to go to, so all I can do is cry and feel sorry for myself for being all alone. So I’ve been nudging you guys into making the choice I want, just so I don’t have to be lonely anymore. That’s pretty dumb, huh? I’m actually really awful, right?”

“I don’t think that’s dumb or awful at all,” I tell her. “And besides, you’re not alone anymore.”

That makes her giggle. “…Yeah. You’re right about that.”

Siskier wipes her face and turns to me. The skin underneath her eyes is red like she’s been crying.

“You’re really going to stay with me from now on, right?”

Something about the way she asks it makes me feel really shy all of a sudden. My face is probably going red. “Yeah. I-I mean, if you’re okay with somebody like me.”

Siskier runs her hands over her face. “Wow! Um. But hey, it’s a contract, so you might as well get something else out of it! It’s not an opportunity you’re gonna get again.”

“…I guess it is, yeah,” is all I come up with.

“You might as well go ahead and make yourself rich, or get a lifetime supply of nice ingredients to cook with or whatever,” Siskier says.

“Ehh…?”

“Then, how about this?” She’s grinning now. That kind of expression makes me happiest—and it worries me a lot. “If you can’t think of something by the time I take care of this witch, you’re going to ask Pamela for a banquet!”

“Huh?”

“A banquet filled with all our favorite foods, and the biggest cake you can imagine,” Siskier says firmly. The effect is ruined a little by the way she’s grinning ear to ear. “That way we can have a party with everybody to celebrate our becoming a team!”

“You want me to become a Puer Magi for _food?”_ When I could just cook everything myself?

Siskier turns on her heel and shrugs. “If you don’t like it, come up with something on your own!”

“Ehh…”

I’m complaining, but I can’t help but smile. Siskier is giggling again. Somehow, saying all of that—really deciding that I’m going to do this—has made me feel a lot better.

_Siskier, hurry up!_ Pamela’s voice makes both of us jump. _The Grief Seed has started to hatch! You gotta get here as fast as you can!_

“Okay,” Siskier says. “I’m having a good day today, so I’m gonna take this sucker out in one hit, just watch me!”

She holds out her left hand, and a brilliant light erupts from around her like the petals of a giant flower. Her whole body shimmers, and she twists like a dancer as her clothes take shape.

Familiars swarm up from the darkness underneath our walkway, but Siskier just laughs. She turns and turns and fills the air with flowers that glow in different colors. They open like fireworks, shooting down the dolls in a brilliant display of light and color that’s showier and more joyful than any magic I’ve ever seen Siskier do.

The rest of the trip goes by in a happy blur. Familiars come at us in droves, and Siskier beats them off with a confident smile. She’s _showing off,_ and just realizing that makes me think back on all the battles I’ve seen her fight and notice that she’s been grim and businesslike up ‘til now. Siskier would have destroyed all the enemies a lot faster instead of letting them get close to kick them back and work this beautiful, complicated magic to dispatch them. She’s playing as much as she’s working. I’d never have thought that she’d be this happy just because of me saying that I’ll be with her.

 We arrive at the witch’s chamber within a few minutes. It’s dark, and Yggdra and Pamela are tucked into an out-of-the-way alcove.

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” Siskier says in a stage whisper as we run to join them. “How are things here?”

“You made it just in time,” Yggdra says. She’d been talking so bravely, but there’s still relief on her face now that Siskier and I have arrived.

“Quiet!” says Pamela. “The witch is coming out!”

All of a sudden the lights go up.

A shape like a birthday present box that was in the middle of the room comes apart, opening on a little creature about the size of a cat or small dog. It’s tiny and furry, dark in color like the room.

“Sorry to cut the fun part short, but I’m taking you out right now!” Siskier yells.

The witch waits for her to come within a person’s height of her and skitters away, climbing up onto the high ridges and delicate scaffolds that make up the walls of this room.

“Oh no you’re not,” Siskier says, and leaps up after it.

The witch keeps running away every time Siskier comes anywhere near close to it. I think she might be able to hit it from far away, but it’s so small that she must want to be close for a sure shot. Whatever the reason, when the witch climbs up higher and higher, she goes after it, not even bothering to look down. She must’ve fought other witches like this in the past, to be this calm—I know she’s never been good with heights.

In the end, the witch runs out of places to escape. Siskier’s not so high up that I can’t see her smirk as she lifts her crossbow—

And the witch scrunches up its body and it— _bursts—_ into a big plume of feathers like a peacock’s tail and

 Siskier jumps back and her foot slips and she

the witch streaks down like a black bolt of lightning and there’s this, this awful _noise_ like a baseball bat splitting a watermelon at a summer party and Siskier’s face is, her face is, blood is—

her clothes turn back to her uniform and

when she hits the ground it’s the second most horrible sound in the world, like an overfull trash bag splitting, blood everywhere and her _face,_ half her head is gone, eye open staring in surprise, and then the witch that’s turned into a giant bird of prey comes down on her and the _tearing—_

Yggdra grabs me, she grabs me and holds me, half my vision disappears into her shoulder but I can’t look away from the witch ripping pink and purple ropes out of, ropes out of, ropes,

From far away, Pamela’s voice: “Gulcasa! Yggdra! Quick, pick a wish to make! Make a contract with me while it’s still busy! _Hurry!”_

And:

“There will be no need for that.”

Nessiah walks past our hiding place and into the open.

“I will handle this battle.”

The witch makes a high-pitched screaming noise. Nessiah spreads his arms wide.

Light surrounds the room. White beams destroy the walls. The witch shrinks to duck through them. The witch flies at Nessiah. The witch turns into its bird self and flies at Nessiah with bloody claws—

Nessiah holds out his hand—

When the witch is almost on top of him he slams into it with his whole body. The blade of a huge sword pushes through the back of the witch. It shrieks. Shrieks. Its body splits and disappears.

“Remember what happened here,” he says. “This is what it means to become one of us.”

The barrier shakes. The barrier shakes. Nessiah’s Puer Magi clothes disappear. He walks to the middle of the barrier. To what’s—left of—her.

“Don’t touch her!” Yggdra lets go of me and stands up. She is screaming. “Don’t even touch her, you—you—”

“Do you or do you not want a body to cremate?” Nessiah asks. His voice. His voice is emotionless. “Unless I’m touching it, the corpse will disappear with the barrier.”

In front of the hospital. She’s a bloody splatter on the pavement. Nessiah lets go and straightens up walks away stops—

he dips to his knees again and when he’s standing up he’s holding the witch’s Grief Seed

“Give that back,” Yggdra is shouting. “That belongs to Siskier!”

Nessiah’s fingers are bloody

“Yes,” he says. There is pity on his face. “These are for Puellae Magi. You mustn’t touch them.”

footsteps as he walks away

Yggdra crying

and none of it seems real, I can smell blood but it doesn’t feel real, I’m going to throw up but it can’t be real, I can’t feel my body I can’t think I can’t even _move._


End file.
